Many who have read Chinese scores in the numerical notation may have at some time or other wondered if Chinese Music is all in the major key?
The numerical notation uses 7 different numbers to represent the 7 notes of the diatonic scale and in essence, these are the notes of the major scale in Western classical music. As a result, it is very common for many to have a misconception that there are only major keys in Chinese music. Keys in Chinese music however isn’t as simple as that. The Chinese is one of the most ancient cultures in the world and it has writings that date back thousands of years which are still accessible now. Over this vast range of time, there has been numerous theses, books and all sorts of writings on music and its keys and…

Gamelan Cipher Notation

Gamelan musicians have always learned gamelan as an aural tradition. They learn and memorize a piece by hearing it played and by practicing it themselves. There is a written cipher notation for gamelan. Notation is not generally used by Javanese musicians but may be used by others, such as ethnomusicologists and foreign students learning gamelan.

Gamelan notation is written in numbers with special characters for accentuating instruments. Music is not notated in a score for all the instruments, so one generally sees the balungan, or melody. Other parts can be notated but this can be difficult to read–it is often easier to learn how to derive one’s part and use one’s own shorthand notation for reminders.

The notation for the buka and umpak of Lancaran Jaranan is shown in the image below (the lagu section of Jaranan is not notated).

Go to this websit and take a closer look at the instruments you find in an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra.

Pelog is one of the two essential scales of gamelan music native to Bali and Java, in Indonesia. In Javanese the term is said to be a variant of the word pelag meaning “fine” or “beautiful”.[2] The other, older, scale commonly used is called slendro. Pelog has seven notes, but many gamelan ensembles only have keys for five of the pitches. Even in ensembles that have all seven notes, many pieces only use a subset of five notes.